Day 66: Through the Wasatch Mts (Wed 30th July)

I'm out for 6am, just as it is getting bright. I head up along Main st and take a left onto route 191 and head out of town. About 500m out of town the road enters a small winding ravine which marks the course of a stream. The bike feels very heavy this morning. I'm carrying about 5 litres of water as there are not towns between Duschene and Thistle, the next settlement on the map, 90 miles down the road.

As I follow this dry, sandy coloured ravine for a few miles it begins to broaden and heighten into a canyon. Its very picturesque with steep craggy slopes dotted with green shrubs. As the canyon heightens the slopes become scattered with pine trees.

The bike feels very sluggish today. I can't get a good pace going. I put it down to the water I'm carying which has added a good deal of weight. Also, the road is rising towards mountains. I become very frustrated with the bike and am tempted to dump some of the water but I decide against that. I plug away, slowly, through the canyons. I'm passing through Indian reservation lands. They belong to the Unita and Ouray peoples. There isn't much life in the canyons. There are some pretty farmsteads. Up along one side canyon there is a cluster of mobile homes but no sign of people. Its very quiet.

Soon pine trees cover the entire slopes either side of the road as I head into the mountains. The road is passing through the Wasatch mountains. I am climbing to a pass at 9,100ft, thats only 100m lower than when I crossed the Rockies. I thought after I crossed the Rockies that it was going to be flat after that. I'm becoming very frustrated with how slow I'm going. I have to stop to drink more frequently now as its gettin hot.

After about 25 miles the road rises sharply. I look up along high wooded slopes which lead up to a hidden mountain pass. The climbing becomes tough. I'm perspiring heavily. Eventually I start to walk, pushing what feels like a very heavy bike. In the heat I'm becoming a bit demoralised. I stop an wonder what I'm doing on the side of this mountain in the middle of nowhere. If somebody had offered me a plane ticket back home at this moment I'd have taken it. At this moment I felt quite low.

I ended up walking to the top of the pass. It was simply a case of putting one foot in front of the other and pushing to the top. Finally, I got to the pass. It shouldn't have been so tough. It wasn't that the mountains were so tough or very high, they weren't. I think, after crossing the Rockies I felt it was going to be plain sailing all the way to the coast (over a thousand miles away???) My resolve and sense of purpose, which you need to keep high in order to keep going seemed to have taken a break and were already on some beach in California. So when I hit these mountains I wasn't ready, mentally. This is probably the downside to going solo on a trip like this. When its good its great but if you're having a tough time you can feel quite alone. If you're in the middle of nowhere when it happens you can feel very alone.

At the top of the pass I get back in the groove. The day picks up after that with a long downhill. After a few miles the land opened up before the road entered a narrow passage which lead into a spectacular gorge. This was great. It made the earlier struggles seem worthwhile. The road wound through spectacular cliffs of pink and red. the canyon twisted and turned as it descended. At its bottom it cut into another, larger, canyon which held the Price river as it flowed from north to South. In the bowl where the ywo canyons met sat a power station. It looked so out of place in such spectacular surroundings.

I stopped at a carpark to eat under a plaque dedicated to the power station, the only shade I could find. I knocked back a litre of water with the food. I was now glad I hadn't ditched the extra water. it was very hot at the bottom of that canyon.

At this point the road I had followed joined route 6 which turned north west and began to climb up out of the cayon to the next set of mountain passes. The road would climb for the next 10 miles up to Soldier summit at 7,500ft. I felt a lot better. The bike was lighter now minus about 3.5 litres of water. It was a lot easier to climb through such spectacular surroundings. I was looking around at the rocky slopes and not thinking about climbing.

A lot of motorists wave and beep their horns today. As I get close to the top of the canyon somebody in a passing car shouted out "Go on buddy, you're nearly there now". A couple of minutes later the canyon spat me ou into a series of open, rolling hills.

I climbed to the top of these hills and in the middle of a set of roadworks I came to a very old looking store cum petrol station. In I went to get some drinks, two bottles, one of water and one apple juice. It was a very old style store with an old feel to it. It had an old counter running along one side and bric-a-brac scattered throughout. The modern drinks coolers and a small microwave seemed oddly out of place here. The owner, an old man, served me and I sat down at the counter to drink. The old man joined me and began to tell me about himself.

This shop is the last building still standing in the town of Colston. One hundred years ago this was a busy town with a hotel, 3 saloons and other businesses. Over 200 families lived here. Now this old man lives alone, the last of a genereation, ending his days in a ghost town. Deinis finch is his name, a bit of a character. His great grandfather came from Cork and sailed from Cobh to New York. There he met his wife, a German lady. They had 7 children and, after a time decided to seek their fortune out West. So they joined the great migration and set out on the Oregon trail. The parents, however died on the trail, leaving the 7 children to fend for themselves. Denis' grandfather apparently hung around with Butch Cassidy. He showed me a photograph of the two together. He also showed me old photographs of what the town used to look like. Looking at the pictures of its busy streets it was hard to believe the town had just disappeared. Now looking out over the dusty hillside as contruction teams built the new highway it was hard to imagine a busy town ever stood at this spot. I said goodbye to Denis and his memories.

Three miles from Colston I reached the pass at Soldier Summit. 10 miles from here lay the village of Thistle where I thought I might stop for the night if it had a motel. However, I found out that the village no longer exists. Eventhough it is still on the map. In 1983 a landslide buried the village, literally wiping it away. For me it meant cycling an extra 10 miles to the town of Spanish Fork. It was almost all downhill from here but a wind had whipped up which was so strong that, at times, I had to go down in to middle gears just to keep moving. It was very hot and the wind formed a hot, dry, gritty blast that parched the back of my throat. I began to feel really hot and frustrated. I was tired now as well. I was supposed to be going downhill but had to push hard just to keep moving. I stopped at a petrol station and got another bottle of water and an ice sludge drink which is great for bringing your temperature down. It was 5pm now and the temperature was over 100f.

I was 20 miles from spanish fork, another 2hrs, i reckoned. I was tired now after 11hrs on the road. While the road continued to descend through a very scenic landscape I was no longer interested. I just wanted to get to spanish Fork. Finally, after passing through one more canyon of bright red clay the road emerged through a narrow cleft in the hills and onto the edge of a flat plain. At this point there was a wind farm, a testeament to the kind of winds that blow up through those canyons. Four miles down the road sat the prosperous looking spanish fork. I got a room in the only motel in town. After a tough 13hrs I was happy to lie down.